kamiel [at] creativechoice.org

When I learned that a Saudi Arabian model by the name of Khulood had been arrested because she walked around butt-naked in a mini-skirt in the old town of Ushaiger, my mind filled with self-righteous anger, that forces itself out in this puff of half-informed vitriol.

I don’t need to know all the details. I want to address this in the vernacular: people, this fucking sucks.

I don’t have time for cultural relativist types indebted to the likes of Edward Said, who charge the privileged Western observer with a lack of cultural ‘sensitivity’ or even understanding. Rather, I respond with an ironic pun that is silly enough to do justice to this terrifying abuse of human rights. ‘Khulood’ sounds to me like ‘culotte’, a divided skirt but I think of culotté, underwear. And it reminds me of the sansculottes, the Parisian revolutionaries.

So, on the barricades, women of Saudi-Arabia! You might live in the most backward country in the world (supported by the second most backward country) where you are unique not allowed to drive a car. As far as I’m concerned, you have a license to drive men crazy.